IT WON’T be long before basic patients’ rights are finally enshrined by law, Health Minister Frixos Savvides said yesterday in an announcement hailed by medical authorities as well as patient support groups.
Marking the beginning of European Week Against Cancer, which this year focuses on cancer patients’ rights, Savvides announced a recent Cabinet decision to approve a Ministry proposal to set up a committee which would study all existing international laws on patient rights in order to draw up similar legislation for Cyprus.
Cancer struck both men and women, irrespective of age, with often devastating health and social consequences, said Savvides. Although progress made in patient care, diagnosis and treatment of the disease was much improved, this could also leave patients exposed and in danger of having their rights and freedoms eroded by the medical profession, he said.
“That is why all patients’ rights must be recognised and secured legally,” he said. Such rights would include: equal access to modern medicine, active participation during use of medical services, dignity and respect of personal life, complete and multidimensional medical information and information confidentiality.
Once the law is passed, patients will no longer have to rely on unwritten codes of ethics to ensure their rights are not violated by the medical profession, but will be able to resort to legal means, according to Patients’ Rights Movement (KDDA) President Christos Eliades.
Patients’ rights were nothing more than the protection of basic human rights, as they were designed to protect human activity within health services, he said.
“Cyprus is one of the few remaining European countries that has not yet passed legislation that recognises and secures patient rights,” said Eliades.
The Anti-Cancer Society, Pancyprian Cancer Patients and Friends Association and the Cyprus Medical Association all applauded the Health Ministry for setting the wheels in motion for a patients’ rights law.
“We believe that recognising patient rights and protecting them effectively through legal means will only help in upgrading medical services,” said member of the Anti-Cancer Society, Dr. Adamos Adamou.
The Medical Association also supported the move, pointing to its introduction of a signed patient consent form, to be approved by its board shortly, as its way of improving patient care and services on the island.
“Patients in both the private and public sector will have to be fully briefed on all medical services they will be subjected to and to what extent that intervention would affect their life, including consequences and side-effects. Only once patients are satisfied that their questions have all been answered can the doctor ask them to sign a consent form for the procedure to go ahead,” said Medical Association President Dr. Antonis Vassiliou.
Pancyprian Cancer Patients and Friends Association President Dr. Anna Achilleoudes said the patients’ rights law would only help patients, health carers and medical institutions operate together in order to ensure the best possible and most humane treatment, which would in turn benefit a patient’s medical care.
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